Guy on Hardball is trying to sell the idea that they never tried to

[HysteryDiagnosis]

tie Iraq and 911 together.... in essence they did deny it several times.... but they/he used the word Saddam or Iraq and 911 dozens and dozens and dozens of times ON EDIT (in the same sentence)... subliminal programming for the weak minded. I caught it the first time it dribbled out of his mouth.

[kikiek]

1. They showed Cheney denying he said it then saying it. Was great.

[aquart]

3. Sweet. The spindoctors are busy today.

No rest for the treasonous.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

5. Boy howdy... dudn't he look stooooooopid when they play those

two clips together.

[maxsolomon]

2. They were careful to walk that line just for this occasion

If i remember correctly, it was always strongly implied, never directly asserted. We all know what i mean, nudge nudge, wink wink. Plausable deniability, just for this purpose.

What foresight!

Fuckers.

[Island Blue]

4. I don't know who the guy is you're talking about

(because I'm not watching Hardball) but do they really think we're all a bunch of hallucinating morans? Don't they know there is video tape (or whatever) that has *, Cheney and everyone else from the administration* repeating that lie over and over and over again?

[Igel]

6. People assumed the link was asserted the same way

that they assumed Wilson asserted that Cheney's office sent him.

There's little difference: You make proposition A, and then proposition B, and common English-language rules of conversational implicature compel people to find the connection.

"It's sunny today. My son had a long nap. We had pizza for dinner." Easily unrelated facts, but people will look for a connection, causal if possible. One may claim I'm manipulating the listeners. Good luck trying to prove it. Laywers, advertising folks, and politicians make extensive use of this kind of juxtapositioning. If nobody's explicit about the rules, it's hard to say where the lapse in ethics is, or do more than claim that the manipulation is intentional.

It works the same way in reverse, to screw a speaker. The notorious 16-words from the SOTU address are, if you believe Blair, unrelated to the Niger forgeries. But they're inseparable in most people's minds, and are assumed to have the same referent, simply because they were discussed in close proximity, verbal and temporal.

It's why I believe Grice and Stalnaker should be taught in 9th or 10th grade.

[thebigidea]

7. which is funny, because this little shit was doing it on the Daily Show

Stewart just laughed at him.

[Guaranteed]

8. And to this day they call invading Iraq part of the war on terrorism. nt

[HysteryDiagnosis]

9. It has now become the war to create terrorists, PERIOD. All four

bombers in JORDAN... were (IRAQIS). Now when have you ever seen 1, one, a single Iraqi suicide bomber or otherwise attack American interests unprovoked.... NEVER. This sorry excuse for an administration is nothing more than a band of criminals.... liars, twisters, spin doctors... desperate, sinking and an enemy of history.

[Mist]

10. Really? How many spools of video tape are there to refute this?

A few miles' worth?